Cooper and his coaches shouldn’t be the only ones fired

Cooper wasn’t the best manager. Heck, he wasn’t even a decent manager. A decent man, but not a decent manager.

Yet, there’s no way the people who fired Cooper can honestly tell the fans they put out a winning product. Pitching wins in baseball, yet Drayton McLane, Tal Smith and Ed Wade have failed to bring a quality pitcher to help Roy Oswalt and Wandy Rodriguez carry the burden.

The fans were suckered into paying quality prices for a horrible team.

I think very highly of McLane, but unfortunately he hasn’t provided a quality product for the fans. If I were McLane, I wouldn’t just fire the manager of this horrible team.

I’d ask serious questions and ask why the heck he’s paying $107 million for such a bad team.

If Drayton really wants to gain the fans’ confidence, Cooper and his coaches won’t be the only one fired for this mess.

Here’s some of what Ed Wade said during Monday’s press conference:

On informing Cooper:

“We waited until he arrived at the clubhouse early this afternoon and Drayton, Tal and I went down and informed him of our decision. Then I met with Dave and made him aware of what was going on and met with the coaches, and then we just finished a team meeting with the players a couple minutes ago.”

On Dave Clark’s chances of retaining the manager’s job:

“The fact that he’s going to have the reins for 13 games is to his advantage from the standpoint of establishing his style. I had a chance to see Dave for a little bit at the minor league level before he joined the big league staff, but not nearly enough to make any evaluation. I think it’s important for him to put his best foot forward and for us to recognize what he brings to the table in that short period of time, but not to use that as the sole criterion for making our decision. I think we have to be open-minded when we get to the off-season. We’ll have a list of people that we want to talk to, and hopefully make the right decision. If it turns out to be Dave, that’s great but we’ll try to make the right decision.”

On whether managerial experience is important:

“Not necessarily. I do think experience goes a long way, but again, I think if you’re going to do this the right way, you’ve got to be open-minded. When you start talking about experience, is it experience solely as a major league manager? Are you walking past some guys who have great minor league credentials or who look like they’re on the precipice of being outstanding managers in some fashion whether they’re big league coaches or minor league managers at that point in time? Again, I think we have to sit down and again take an open mind of things. Spend our time researching – my friend Tal points out everybody interviews well, so I’m not sure you get a lot out of the interview process but I think if we do our homework, we’ll end up making the right decision.”

On why this decision was made now:

“First of all, I thought it was going to be awkward to go all the way to the end of the season, come back from New York and make a move. The practicality of it didn’t make sense to me. And the fact that now we can put Dave in place. We can have a different circumstance or set of circumstances working here for two weeks. Albeit a short period of time, but we may find some things out, and hopefully this creates a spark and gets us on a run here, so we can finish on a high notes.”

What do you want to evaluate?

“Clarkey in the manager’s seat, the coaches and how they respond to him, but the bottom line is how our players respond. I think when you make a change like this, it doesn’t just fall to the guy that takes the hit. I think accountability comes into play in a lot of different areas, particularly the players on the field. My hope or expectation would be that we see this group of players step up and put their best foot forward for 13 games here.”

On how they’ll proceed:

“We want to win every game between now and the end of the season. Is it going to seem cosmetic to some people? Probably to some people. But I think it’s important because I think it helps establish an attitude that we’re not happy with the way things have gone and we’re going to do something about it, and when I say ‘we,’ particularly the players and how they’re approaching the games day in and day out.”

About possible candidates:

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to get into a list of candidates at this point. Obviously, we’ve spent some time thinking about making this change and what took place today. I would like to go ahead and spend the next couple of weeks or several weeks trying to really lock down a list of candidates that makes a lot of sense. From a time constraint, we’re going to be probably looking at post-World Series before we get this thing done. And that’s why we felt it was important to talk to our coaching staff today to make them aware of where this thing was, because I don’t want them to get caught short at the back end if we decide to make changes on the coaching staff. So there are a lot of decisions to be made; we had one decision to move on today, and that was relieving Coop of his duties as manager of the Astros. We’ve got a lot of other decisions to make going forward, and we’re going to use every amount of time to make sure we’re evaluating candidates and to make sure what we’re doing is not for cosmetic purposes, but for the betterment of the Houston Astros.”

Where did Coop fall short?

“I’m not going to get into that. Coop’s an outstanding baseball guy, and as I told the players – they shared a room with him over there for two years – and the level of professionalism has to be saluted. I don’t think it serves any purpose to go into the reasons why. Obviously we felt that there were reasons or else we wouldn’t have made a change.”

How did he handle it?

“Absolutely professionally. It was he and I and Tal and Drayton, and I thought it was the epitome of class. He indicated that he thought there was something possibly going to happen. I didn’t ask him to expound on that. But he handled it very professionally. He went into his office, talked to his coaches and packed up.”

Why did you guys pick up the option?

“You try to make right decisions. We’re tasked with making a lot of decisions over the course of the year or a couple of years. I believe today that the decision we made at that time to exercise the contract option was the right thing to do. As we move forward, things changed, and we don’t have control over a lot of things that change. But again, we felt at the time that we exercised the option, that it was sending the right message to our club and the right message to other precincts and to Coop himself with regard to how we viewed our overall situation at the time.

“It always comes down to the product on the field, but you have to evaluate every aspect of what’s taking place. It can’t just be, OK, this is the talent, these are the shortcomings of the club, these are the injuries that occurred, these are the players that haven’t met expectations. All those things, you can’t walk away from. I can’t walk away from them, nobody can in the organization. But again, we’re tasked with evaluating all aspects of our situation, and at the end of the day, we’re going to try to address those on-field issues that exist. We’re not walking away from them. But the issue that we had to address in the short term is the managerial issue, and that’s why we’re moving forward on that today.”

18 Responses

If there was one boneheaded move that destroyed the Astro’s chances this season, it was the decision not to try to re-sign Randy Wolf. As I understand it, that was a Drayton decision. Wolf would have been a bargain based on how he has done this year. A rotation of Oswalt-Wandy-Wolf looks pretty good as a 1-2-3. As a #5 starter, Moehler is better than average — his ERA is only mediocre, but he pitches plenty of innings.

That would have left us with only a single rotation spot to fill. It’s a lot easier to fill one rotation spot than two. Drayton blew it.

Yea I think the Astros coaches will be next in line. I guess Wade is waiting til the season is over so they can start looking. If it was me I wish the season to end today now the Reds are getting ahead of the Astros in the standing in fifth place. I just believe a team like the Astros are planning this kind of baseball. Clark u need to play other players he is getting like Cooper play the same players all the time. Change the line-up I am getting tired & no everybody else is too. I just wish the best for Bud Norris he is getting better so the team needs to get better too. If not start cleaning house & find some players that can play the game right are moved to Tennessee like the Oilers did. Hoping the Astros need to clean house in the front office.. ????????????????

You people blaming Wade (including you Ortiz) have lost your minds. You think it was Wade’s idea to offer a contract to Wolf and suddenly pull it off the table? You think it was Wade’s idea that Russ Ortiz was going to be the solution?

Drayton gave Wade a payroll to work with, and he did the ONLY things he could with it. You’re blaming an employee for obeying his boss, it’s foolishness. What was he supposed to do, burst into Drayton’s office and say “it doesn’t matter what you want the payroll to be, we’re signing Wolf and that’s that!” Is that what you people would do with your boss if he gave you an order you don’t like? Please, get real.

The next middle-aged man that refers to a player or coach using a cutesy form of his last name (“Clarkey,” Baggy,” “Miggy,” “Bidge”) should be fired. Spare me all the make-believe, kissy face crap …. tell Berkman to stop hugging every opposing player that comes down to 1B. This team needs some attitude, some in-your-face street personality. I’ve had it watching fat millionaires jog to first base.

Lots of people need to be unemployed within the Astros organization, and I don’t mean players or any other coaches.

The other thing the Astros need to work on is FAN EXPERIENCE at the park. We keep hearing how the FAN EXPERIENCE IS #1 with the Astros, and they desperately need fans in the seats, but yet, the ushers treat the fans REALLY badly. The young guys paint their chests and cheer for the Astros, and they are told to put their shirts back on. Oh come on! You see this in every park across the USA. I’ve seen the ushers go up and tell cheering fans to stop yelling so loudly, that they are bothering people around them. Good grief, go to the library if you are looking for quiet. In all instances, these people were having good harmless fun. On the other hand, I have been near cussing, profane, loud-mouthed drunks in MMP and they are never told anything. Fan experience? That is why I now stay home. My fan experience has been enhanced by NOT giving the Astros my money for an inferior product and an inferior fan experience.

The Astros have LOTS of things to fix before the fans will again fill MMP to capacity. And I don’t mean fixing things by giving away another BGO bobble-head. I mean REAL fixes.

Thank You for asking the tough questions during the press conference. I applaud the way you kept asking the questions. Your questions really didn’t get answered but at least you asked them. I wish other journalists in Houston would’ve asked them as well but I didn’t hear them. It’s time for Tal Smith and Ricky Bennet to go as well. How Ricky Bennet is allowed to stay while our farm system is in shambles is beyond belief. I think Cooper got a raw deal and I hope all those players complaining get the same raw deal. The insubordination in that clubhouse is solely on the players. I hope the players who led the charge would be exposed as the frauds they are.

Wandy has been outstanding this year. If the Astros had a decent offense, he would be a Cy Young candidate. This team needs pitching, but it needs a better offense, too. Just because all of the money is tied up there, doesn’t mean we should look the other way in regards to the production from those guys. And Manzella and Johnson are not ML players. Next year we will be longing for the good ol’ days of Lane and Ensberg.